Any Destiny At All, However Long and Complicated
by Beringae
Summary: Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy's long destinies were decided in two separate but interconnected instants. Much later, she begins to write of his and is reminded of her own.
1. A curling sheet of parchment

Disclaimer: None of it's mine—all belongs to J.K., Warner Bros., whoever else. This is my first HP fanfic in a LONG TIME… be gentle :)

**Any Destiny At All, However Long and Complicated**

()()()

**At that time he must have considered himself happy, though profoundly he was not. (A luminous, fundamental night, still secret in the future, awaited him: the night on which he saw his own face at last, the night on which he heard at last his name. In all truth, that one night exhausts his story; or rather, one instant in that night, one act in that night, for acts are symbols of ourselves.) Any destiny at all, however long and complicated, in reality consists **_**of a single moment**_**: the moment in which a man once and for all knows who he is.**

**- Jorge Luis Borges, "Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz"**

()()()

Because her hearing had deteriorated so severely in the past year, the sound of the immense oaken door closing was vague, muzzled as if she were underwater, but it yet seemed decisive. The vast anteroom—it had always seemed to her _too _large, far too gargantuan for the scope of their lives—rang in the quiet as if the absence of noise were a tangible thing. After the presence of the varied voices of her children and grandchildren, after the hum of their concerned chatter, the sudden, silent solitude left her both relieved and bereft. She moved slowly these days, so the journey upstairs was a leisurely one, and she took the time to reflect on the evening.

They worried far too much. The house (She had never accustomed to calling it a _manor. _The word itself denoted pretension and she had always been cautious of any manifestation of it in her person.) _was_ very empty, of course, but she didn't feel _alone_ in the slightest. They often forgot that she did actually have friends, companions with whom she frequently spent the afternoon sitting in one of her favorite cafés. She very much enjoyed spending time with her grandchildren, and made sure to set aside an afternoon each week to visit with at least one of them. While her activity within the wizarding community had certainly diminished as the years wore on, she still had select causes which coaxed her from her routine. A routine, she had discovered, became increasingly vital in one's old age, but every now and again she found herself the recipient of some honor or the celebrated guest at some function, and her schedule had to be adjusted. She did not complain—it was more a privilege than a burden.

Their concern was touching and she was grateful for it, even if it exasperated her. She wasn't going to fall down the stairs, she wasn't going to slip in the bathtub. If she'd felt she needed additional alarm wards she would have erected them herself. Her brain had been spared the corrosion that her ears had so suffered, and she hoped they didn't need reminding that she was still the magical genius she had been in her youth.

She yet moved with some of the grace she had so enjoyed as a young woman, but surely slower. Her knees creaked only slightly as she lowered herself into the desk chair in her personal study, a small room that had once been the house elves' quarters. She had delighted in forcing him to transfigure it into something else, something different just for her, an additional victory after her liberation of the elves themselves, and until the ownership of house elves had been banned altogether she had lorded it over him like an insufferable twit.

A smile flitted across her creased lips as she remembered his sulking pout as his reluctant wand enchanted the ceilings higher, the walls into bookshelves, a dumpy bed into a gleaming mahogany desk. She yet felt the presence of his magic in the varnish as she smoothed her palms over the wood, musing over the papery, age-spotted skin that seemed to collapse against the tendons and bones visible on the backs of her hands.

She still preferred the use of parchment and quill, even after wizards had adopted muggle word-processors. Quills were nearly impossible to find nowadays, but she liked to imagine that her patronage kept in business the small Diagon Alley vintage calligraphy shop she visited every month. She picked up one of the objects in question, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger expertly as she smoothed a curling sheet of parchment before her.

Starting had been something she had been dreading for months. Memories, even after all the years that had passed, still caused her pain that was not insignificant. One never really stops mourning the passing of her soul mate. But so he had instructed, and so she began.

A false start, an ugly blotch of ink soaked into parchment by too-shaky hands, but yet she endured.

()()()

_Hermione Granger was not a stupid person, nor could she be classified as ignorant (she tried to convince herself) simply because she preferred to propagate her own ignorance of the fact that her two closest friends had indeed become friends with Draco Malfoy. It was an easy thing to ignore—they seemed to be actively hiding the development from her, and she was not foolish enough to shatter the illusion when it was working out so nicely for all of them. _

_It was impossible, however, to pretend ignorance of the massive help he had been during the war and of the substantial risks he had taken—not unselfishly, she liked to remind anyone who mentioned it to her. Harry and Ron seemed continually surprised that she did not, in fact, consider it brave to defect to the light in order to shirk inevitable defeat. A small, secret, ashamed part of her occasionally admitted that playing the double agent had probably been an unnecessary risk that might have won them the war, but she tried to repress these annoyingly impartial thoughts as quickly as they arose. Someone who had been such a vile, bratty, vicious human being in his youth deserved no forgiveness in return. _

_(She had seemed unaffected, she knew, by that horrible, demeaning word, by the stark and unmerited hate in his eyes, but words leave scars in places even friendship's concern cannot see.) _

_So when she apparated to Godric's Hollow one Saturday (the war had ended—finally ended, not one of those pretend endings that were really just more beginnings—a scant few months before and she became unaccountably nervous if she did not see her friends and family every day), she could not help but react badly when she saw the three of them sitting around a television set watching muggle football. Her mouth seemed caught between dropping open and frowning disagreeably, and she could do nothing but stand there, unnoticed, as Harry explained, rather exasperated if she were to judge by his tone._

"_So the signal is broadcast at the station and it travels through the air to us. The telly picks it up and shows it on the screen. It's really quite cool how muggles go about things without magic, right?"_

_Malfoy looked extremely skeptical, although he seemed to be managing to keep his customary sneer at bay. "Why don't they just _go _there instead of _pretending _like they're there? It's really stupid and dishonest, if you ask me. They're changing a real experience into something anyone can see if they have this machine." He added, resentfully, "And this is nothing like Quidditch, Potter."_

_Ron was smiling in a dazed sort of way as he watched the match. Harry appeared to be considering Malfoy's opinion. "Transportation is much more difficult in the muggle world, they can't just wave their wands and go someplace. Honestly, I've never thought about the integrity_ _of television, and the fact that you've been the one to bring it up is downright bonkers if you ask me." He was grinning, but Hermione noticed that it didn't touch at all the heavy shadows that had settled in his eyes in the past year. _

_She felt a little uncomfortable eavesdropping and cleared her throat just loudly enough that they noticed but not with enough force to startle them. The last time she caught Ron unawares his curse had nearly taken off her right arm. She noticed Malfoy jerked in his seat anyway. "Hey Hermione," chimed her two friends._

"_What's with the telly?"_

"_Draco'd never seen one before."_

"Honestly_." Her tone was disdainful, and she saw from the corner of her eyes Malfoy's gaze narrow unpleasantly and noted that the sneer had returned. _

"_Shut it, Granger." She suspected he was restraining the vehemence of his language for the benefit of the two boys (men) at his side, who studiously ignored this interchange with the air of a pair who'd had a lot of practice._

"_Prat."_

"_Twat."_

_She thought it rather charitable that she decided to take that as an insult to her intelligence rather than as a commentary on her anatomy, and with a huff went off to the kitchen for something to eat. Arguing with Malfoy always worked up an appetite, and these days she found that she was eating an awful lot. _

"_You know, just because I saved your life once doesn't mean you should put all that effort into civility, Granger. We wouldn't want you to strain yourself." The sheer quantity of sarcasm in his tone was impressive, and she attempted to roll her eyes at him without turning around so as to avoid further conversation, craning her neck awkwardly and only succeeding in making herself feel more idiotic. He had left Harry and Ron to their game, clearly uninterested in any activity that didn't include death-defying heights and murderous inanimate objects. _

_She _hated_ when he brought that up. It was a secret they shared, clandestine and particularly mortifying for them both, which he only occasionally mentioned when he wanted to really persecute her. Each chose to avoid any unnecessary association with the other, and acknowledgement of their unlikely history was in absolute opposition to this unspoken pact. She knew that only when the temptation of doling out harassment was especially strong did he resort to mention of the event. She must have done something to really piss him off. _

"_Well you make it so easy with your pleasant discourse," she retorted, attempting to curb the venom in her voice. Her dislike for him was so palpable that she became visibly flustered, and the knife with which she had been slicing cheese ended up slicing her finger instead. She stuck the cut in her mouth and sucked. "Ouch."_

_He was grinning unpleasantly as if he took a special brand of joy in her pain. She glowered at him, and he seemed to restrain himself. In fact, he began to look decidedly uncomfortable—shuffling his feet a bit in an uncharacteristic way, shifting his eyes about like a large, nervous dog—and her curiosity peaked despite herself. "Look, Granger," he said in a more reasonable tone, lowering his voice and casting a shifty glance over his shoulder to where the TV blared as someone scored a goal, "we don't like each other and we probably never will, but I'm really trying with Scarhead and Weasel King, all right? And I'd appreciate it if you left off with the grimacing and whinging while they're around. Those particular charms of yours can really suck the enjoyment out of a room."_

_She was so astonished that she just blinked at him for several seconds before a thought that seemed to her both very funny and horribly sad occurred to her. _

He has no one else in the world.

_A rise of traitorous pity rose in her breast and she tamped it down with her customary stubbornness. She knew he had been left in an odd limbo after the war, neither side really accepting of either his criticisms or his aid, but she now realized she had not understood the true circumstances of his situation at all. Recovering, she reacted instinctively: "Well you could start by not calling them Scarhead and Weasel King." It was said haughtily but without rancor._

_He appeared to be mollified by her lack of malice, and relaxed visibly. "Pet names, Granger. Just be glad I don't call you—"_

_She felt suddenly like choking on her own breath. "Mudblood?" She spat the word out as if it burned her throat and tongue, as if it were turpentine._

_The teasing glint fled from his eyes, and his mouth snapped shut into a thin, white line. They stared at one another for some time, eyes locked over the span of their conflict and their prejudice, before he spoke, quiet and spiteful, with a smooth, predatory air that reminded her of his father. "No. No… I was going to say Insufferable Bookworm, but if you'd rather the other, I might oblige—"_

_The knife made a clatter that was almost riotous when it hit the tile counter; she had thrown it with such force that it actually chipped an area of yellowing grout. Staring evenly at him, ignoring Harry and Ron's sudden silence in the next room, she disapparated into an accusatory crack, into a void. _

()()()

_**From the desk of Hermione Malfoy, April 14, 2069.**_

The account I presently relate has been transcribed from the personal writings of my late husband, Draco A. B. Malfoy. He asked that before his death, upon the event of the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Lord Voldemort (sheer coincidence demands that I forsake any premeditated relation to the unhappy fact that this year also marks the fifth since Harry Potter's death), I release to the public a story that has been both much speculated on and frequently exaggerated to ridiculous proportions.

I am well aware that over the past three-quarters of a century the events leading up to and including the Horcrux War have transformed into a sort of mythology. A combination of the varying authenticity of history textbooks and the Wizarding Britain's cultural memory has molded that terrible time into a kind of communal scar that we display proudly as if it raged across our foreheads, as if we all carried the mark my old friend was made to suffer since infancy. But here Draco has lain bare the facts, _his _facts, and nothing more. It is my most fervent hope that they are taken as such and not as dogma, pretense, or politics.

The entirety of Draco's adult life may be considered an attempt to rectify the harm he believed himself to have caused as a young man. I profoundly believe that renewed analysis of his many donations, foundations, and the overall dispersion of his wealth throughout his lifetime is pertinent in light of this heretofore unknown recount of a particularly dark period of life, a period that, as far as I know, he shared with another soul only one time in his long-short, happy-tragic, terrible-wonderful life.

()()()

_She clutched the pieces of her wand in crabbed fingers. Her flesh was near frozen, the rain sucking warmth from her like it had lungs. She ran hard, her breath stinging along with her eyes, frantic as she looked everywhere for them: the roofs of looming shops, down alleyways, in the mottled reflections in puddles. Hogsmeade bore none of the charm and memories she knew from what seemed like her childhood, even though she recalled smiling and linking arms with her friends as they walked these cobblestones not two years before. _

_She was _fucked_, and she knew it. Death Eaters enjoyed populating Hogsmeade heavily, as if gloating over their recent successful invasion and subsequent occupation required corporeal reminders. It had seemed a simple reconnaissance mission—get in, look around, note their numbers, and get out—but they had underestimated Voldemort's manpower and were now paying the price dearly. She had been separated from the others (George Weasley, Lupin, Tonks, and Kingsley) nearly half an hour back and was starting to panic. She heard Death Eater voices echo through the crooked streets of the town and ran harder, turning towards the outskirts and aiming for the moors so she could lose herself in the heath and heather. _

_She turned a corner and had to stifle a shout when she saw a cluster of dark-robed men at the end of the alley. The rain disguised the sound of her footsteps but not the paleness of her face, and she saw one of them sniff oddly and then move his head towards her, wolf-like and predatory. His yellow eyes lit upon hers; recognition and dread drained her face ashen._

Greyback.

_She didn't bother with stealth, just spun and ran flat out, instinctively aiming her ruptured wand over her shoulder and rasping a curse. It shot pathetic gold sparks in her wake and she heard their laughter and footsteps behind her._

_She was not athletic and they were gaining on her. A blockage rose in her chest—she couldn't tell if it was breathlessness or a sob or some combination of the two. She thought she was crying but with the rain it was impossible to tell. _

_Just as she was about to resign, about to turn and fight with whatever she could, with her fists and teeth and flesh, she turned down another alley in time to just barely see a dark arm shoot out and grab the neck of her jacket. She was jerked nearly off her feet as someone dragged her into an alcove, one of the many architectural misadventures of the village, and cast a hurried but effective disillusionment charm over their location. She opened her mouth to scream but the beginnings of the sound were muffled by a cold hand that clapped over her face. She bit it, hard._

"_Fuck, Granger!" It was whispered but he managed to convey his significant displeasure all the same. _

_Draco Malfoy looked terrible but he certainly fit the part. His black robes hung, lank with the rain, from his shoulders and that distinctive mask dangled down his back from its string around his throat. The familiar garb repulsed her, and she stepped away from him in her incredulity. "M-Malfoy?"_

_He seemed to be reinforcing their position, erecting what she thought were wards of some kind. He was clenching and releasing the hand that she had bitten, his left. "Yeah," he said lowly, obviously as unhappy about the situation as she was. "Who was after you?"_

"_Um… Greyback… Mcnair?" She thought, adrenaline clouding her memory as she breathed in gasps, in soft, traumatic whimpers. "Dolohov and Yaxley, I think."_

"_There are thirteen more, including Bellatrix and my father. What were you thinking, coming here? _Monumentally _stupid," he spat angrily, accusing as he glared down at her, meeting her eyes for perhaps the first time. "They like to linger after a victory. You're just lucky The Dark Lord isn't here."_

"_We thought—"_

"_Why didn't anyone check with me beforehand?"_

"_Ask Harry," she ground out, irritation finally eclipsing her fear. "It was his idea. We thought that after a week most of them would be gone, and we wanted to assess the damage and their numbers."_

_He still looked furious, but apparently opted for relative peace as he took in her disheveled, terrified appearance. "We'd best stay here for a while, until they calm down. Where are the rest?" _

_She shook her head, entirely forlorn, and to her absolute horror she felt an unbidden burning in her retinas. He either pretended not to notice or the rain masked her affliction, and he turned his attention from her to stare strangely into the adjacent alleyway, tense like a tracking hound._

_His dislike for her was tangible, and she abruptly wondered why he had intervened and was even tempted, despite herself, to ask him. Hermione now took the time to note the subtle changes in him since she'd seen him last, at the end of their sixth year, _before_. His hair was longer, no longer meticulously trimmed and parted as it had been in their school days. He was taller and the lanky boyness of his limbs had filled out. His sturdier build seemed stark against the angularity and shadows of his face, which told of sleepless nights and appetite loss. She was astute enough to discern the exhaustion with which he leant one shoulder against the brick wall of their hiding place._

_Hermione knew that both Ron and Harry, along with other, more senior members of The Order, were in frequent contact with Malfoy, but she had fortunately been spared that particular pleasure. The information both he and Snape provided was invaluable, so when Malfoy showed up on The Order's doorstep thirteen months before and convincingly renounced his allegiance to the Dark by offering his services as a double agent they had—after admittedly much argument and near physical confrontations—accepted his proposal. The physical toll of the job was evidenced before her eyes, but sympathy, usually so quick to rise in her chest, lay dormant. She preferred to forget Malfoy even existed, even if the information with which they planned and strategized their actions was often his. She'd been rather successful so far—she'd not seen him once in the two years since war broke out—but the reality of him was, needless to say, an unavoidable concession as he had just saved her life. _

_She realized abruptly that her knees were shaking and she slid down against the wall to sit unceremoniously in the middle of a puddle. He shot a side-glance in her direction but his customary sneer was absent. She almost wished for its appearance, if only for a brief streak of normalcy, of something from _before_, in the hectic, broad brushstrokes of her life. _

"_Why_ _didn't you curse them?" he asked suddenly._

_She realized that she still held the useless bits of her wand in her clenched fingers and showed them to him with a sigh that turned into an embarrassing, hitched blubber. It was like she could feel the magic sifting from between her fingertips, like her essence was escaping along with the threads of Dragon heartstring that splayed over her palm._

_His face was neutral, but she knew no wizard could remain completely impassive at the sight of a broken wand. "How?"_

"_One of them cursed me and I hit the wall." As she mentioned it the sharp throbbing of her shoulder resurfaced and she grimaced, bringing her hand up to flutter uselessly over the aching region. She pushed down the collar of her shirt to see the florid, purple-green bruise already spilling over the entire dome of her left shoulder. She looked up to find that he was watching her, but he turned his face away after barely a moment's eye contact. _

_A thought occurred to her as she righted her shirt. "Are you in communication with Snape, by the way? Moody has been trying to reach him—he said he had some information for us last time he contacted us but that was three weeks ago…"_

_He looked at her strangely, as if he were attempting to determine whether she was intentionally trying to fuck with him. "None of you have heard? He's in The Dark Lord's dungeon, awaiting questioning." Upon seeing her confused stare, he continued. "He suspects."_

"_Does he suspect you?"_

"_Of course not."_

_His tone was sure, even cocky, but she thought perhaps it was a front that would break under more scrutiny than she was willing to give. He seemed to perceive her disbelief and dropped his eyes. "You're sitting in a puddle, Granger," he said, an almost cruel humor in his voice._

_She hadn't noticed, and abruptly rose, shivering as the frigid water dripped down the back of her thighs and calves. The silence between them was extraordinarily uncomfortable, and she almost (_almost_) wished for the return of his pseudo-colleagues just to break the thickly accumulating tension. In her periphery she saw him raise his left hand to pass it over his forehead, perhaps wiping away the raindrops or something else, and his sleeve slipped down._

_She stared at the black, necrotizing stain against his white skin that this movement revealed, her eyes frozen and repulsed. She all at once felt ill, and he must have sensed her disgust because he turned his face to her. She watched his jaw work under the skin, watched the tension and pull of the joint there, but he lowered his hand so that necrosis was hidden from her once again. _

_And she didn't like to be reminded, and she hated the sight of it, and she wished he would go away. _

"_I think I hear them calling your name," he said, half to break the line of their discomfort. She trained her hearing into the harsh patter of the rain but it was useless. He had fished from a secret pocket in his robes a familiar, large coin and tapped it with his wand. Moments later George and Tonks appeared at the end of their alley, looking anxious. Invisibility yet shrouded them and Hermione made to step from that concealment, but Malfoy grabbed her elbow with a grip that stung. "I wouldn't, not yet."_

_He began to murmur spells that Hermione recognized as highly advanced, and she felt the enchantment melt from around them, felt the shimmer of his magic dissolve. She looked at his face, rather close to hers now, and faltered. "Er… thanks, Malfoy."_

_All at once he looked, for the first time that night, like the awkward teenager that he was, and she felt a creaking pain, unpracticed and illogical, in her chest. Looking everywhere but her, he replied, "I have to get back. They'll be wondering." And suddenly he disappeared with a sound that made her start despite its familiarity._

_George and Tonks asked her how she had gotten away from them, and clucked sympathetically when she showed them the hopeless flotsam of her wand. _

()()()

**September 2053, Wiltshire **

It's not as if I don't know what's been said about me. In the near sixty years since the night my true life began I've been both exalted and—horribly and perhaps rightfully—slandered, depending on who you talk to. I write now not to continue this trend nor to further inflate my own already stout ego, but to instead tell a story, the _true _story, of my redemption. The word "redemption" seems silly and theatrical, but I know of no other word that accurately describes my experiences.

They keep telling me to write an autobiography, to go through my life step-by-step until it's hashed out in excruciating detail. I always reply that not only do I find that process entirely unnecessary, but also that the only sort of people who'd want to read such a thing surely belong locked away in St. Mungo's. It is an uneventful life except for a few select years in the middle, entirely boring save for the circumstances into which I have been thrown.

I read once somewhere (the source escapes me in my ever-advancing age) that our idea of a biography may be redefined to encompass only the one instant—a night, a moment at dusk, a particular Sunday morning—in which our destiny presents itself to us. What came before and what comes after is secondary and accidental, except that which is necessary knowledge for our comprehension of _the_ moment. The choice we make and the measures we take upon this manifestation of our destiny are what determine us, what determine who we are. Those who witness a man at this moment, this all-important instant of his life, may know him better than his wife, his children or his mother, simply because who he is is defined and revealed in that time. So a biography in the traditional sense of the word is superfluous and self-indulgent, when all that _really _matters is what we do in a miniscule fraction of our life span.

My story lends itself particularly well to this theory. Before that night in the astronomy tower in June of 1997 I was one person, and after, another. What came _before_ were the misadventures of a silly, over-eager, ignorant boy; what came in the years after was the gradual realization of an emerging young man, neither of which are particularly interesting or essential information. To me, what counts and what I will enumerate in the coming pages is the _instant_, the mere _seconds _during which I realized, with my wand trained on Albus Dumbledore, that I could not kill for the cause to which I had thought myself so devoted.

And _that_—not my service to The Order during the war, not falling in love with my wife, as so many have speculated—was the beginning of the frame-shift, of the revolution.

()()()

**A/N: **This is a bit of an experiment. The story told in the present (or future, as it is) is inspired entirely from Borges, from the multiple, layered narrations (as can be seen in "The Garden of Forking Paths", among others; I actually drew a diagram to sort everything out in my head because I'm a dork) to the tone to the theory Draco lays out at the end. You can all thank the Borges seminar I'm taking this semester for this weirdness. The bits in italics are kind of the antithesis of Borges: more emotional, eventually more romantic. I know I've been inactive in this fandom FOREVER, so I hope you guys enjoy this. I have more written so chapters shouldn't be too long in coming, and you can probably expect it to be around 5-6 chapters long unless I get carried away.

I've been looking back at my old fics (cringing, mostly), and it's very interesting to see how much my writing has changed since, for instance, The Niezsche Classes. Possibly more pretentious and less instinctual, now, I think.

If y'all are looking for a new fic in a new fandom to explore, I'm also writing Time Immemorial, a Bourne fic, that's really fun.

BTW I'm kind of ignoring the idea of wizards living so much longer than humans because it creeps me out :). Sorry for such a long author's note.


	2. The uninhabitable place

**Chapter**: The uninhabitable place

()()()

_He looked nervous. So nervous, in fact, that Hermione almost felt sorry for him. But She was better than most at reading faces and because of this she knew that many of the people in the room would not notice his unease. He had erected that imperious, bored Malfoy-mask that she recognized from Hogwarts, and it reminded people of his father to such an extent that they tended not to look at him for too long. He looked expensive and tailored, and she thought it probably wasn't helping his case. _

_There had been so many heroes during the war that a new type of recognition had been deemed necessary: The Medal of Wulfric, named after Dumbledore. The public demanded some sort of recognition for the feats to which they owed their victory and the Ministry couldn't very well go handing out Order of Merlins willy-nilly (She, Ron and Harry had in fact received their First Class medals some months before). They'd wanted Harry to be the namesake for the new honor, but he'd flatly refused with the excuse that "Potter" was a ridiculous name to tack onto an award and nothing he could come up with sounded as badass as Wulfric. _

_She knew Harry and Ron had recommended Malfoy for the award, and the follow-through was evidence to the amount of true sway the two held with the Ministry and the public. The scar of Dumbledore's death was yet readily associated with the Malfoy name and the son was not a popular figure in the least, despite The Order's insistence of his efforts during the war. _

_And so he sat in his posh dress robes and tapped his fingers against the edge of the table while Kingsley expounded his virtues, obviously trying hard not to fidget. Hermione had not really wanted to come, but reasoned that a show of unity within the trio was important in this delicate, tiptoeing year after the culmination of the war._

(That cloud of smoke, that nebulous, opaque mass through which she could see nothing. She saw nothing, she saw empty blanks of nonentities, she saw white as she fell. She was sure they were dead, but heard Harry's trembling, little-boy voice over the roar of her own blood and knew that they must have killed it.)

"…_And so for his impressive bravery, sacrifice, and personal risk in the name of the light, we award The Medal of Wulfric to Draco Malfoy." Kingsley's grand, booming voice echoed rather dully through the Ministry's award hall, but Hermione thought his declaration effective nonetheless; the applause was vaguely sparse, but it was there._

_Malfoy's steps were sure as he accepted his medal, but he sat down quickly without acknowledging the recognition from the crowd and stared blankly ahead for the remainder of the ceremony. Two more medals were awarded (Neville tripped adorably as he accepted his and Luna appeared to be inspecting Kingsley's shining pate for Nargles), a stale chocolate torte served as dessert, and people began to leave quite soon after the champagne. These ceremonies were always strange affairs; everyone was quick to bestow honors and relatively eager to attend, but reminders of wartime were no easy brunt to bear and discomfort invariably permeated throughout the atmosphere. _

_Hermione was one of the last to leave—she'd been sucked into a conversation between the boys and Moody and excusing herself had proved more awkward than it was worth. She kissed the raspy cheeks of her friends before they disapparated but she felt like walking a ways; the stars were blinking charmingly at her and the night was brisk. _

_She saw Malfoy sitting on the stairs outside, the medal weighty in his palm as if it were forged into the skin. His elbows on his knees, he stared at the step below him where a film of water reflected the sky above. It had rained lightly, not enough to saturate the cement but enough to leave a faint sheen over most things. When she breathed she tasted the moisture in the air; it hung sweetly, suspended in the atmosphere and she inhaled deeply to savor it._

_She'd slipped off her shoes—the tendons in her insteps had begun to ache in earnest about an hour back—and thus her approach was silent. "Malfoy." She wasn't sure why she didn't ask him a question, why she didn't ask him why he was sitting out here all alone. She said his name, her voice dimly conciliatory, and nothing more._

_His head jerked up, and he closed his fingers around the medal he'd been offering in open hand, as if to the night. There was something in his eyes that made her pause, that chased away their customary acrimony. He took a breath, hesitating so she could see his throat working at the words, before speaking. "I wish they hadn't given it to me. I don't want it."_

"_I know." _

_He looked at her with more concentration now, surprised. "I don't know why they wanted… why they felt…"_

"_You don't know? Harry."_

_He quieted, obviously considering this. He was silent for so long that she was about to leave before he spoke again. "While I regard you as a particularly unbearable know-it-all, I'll admit it has its advantages. You… know about me. You've been busybodying around Potter and Weasley since Hogwarts, you know all the mucking about I've done, all the trouble I've caused. I don't want this." His tone was neither over-dramatic nor self-indulgent, and it rather amazed her. It was perhaps the first civil thing he'd ever said to her, and she was too shocked to reply properly. Slowly, without thinking, she sat next to him, mindful of the wet on her dress. _

"_I don't know if you know this, Malfoy, I can't imagine Harry and Ron haven't told you, but what you did probably won us the war. After Snape was killed yours was the only information we had about the other side. Do you realize that? _You _told us what to expect, where Voldemort would be that last day." It cost her a fair amount to say this, as she disliked admitting even to herself what a value he had been, but she sensed somewhere unnamable in her chest that he needed to hear it and she was not so cruel as to intentionally augment the suffering that seemed so profound in him. She refused to look at him but could see the blur of his face watching the side of hers in the corner of her vision. _

_When he said nothing in reply her unease became so overwhelming that she put on her shoes, her rushed fingers fumbling with and then abandoning the buckles, and rose with a minor stumble owing to the height of her heels. She saw him wrench forward, preparing to grab her lest she tumble down the stairs, but she righted herself and stepped out of reach. "I'd better go, it's late…" she said, her voice high and betraying her stress. _

_He gave a short nod and resumed staring at the medal in his hand. She was rummaging through her purse so as to appear preoccupied. "Toss it in the bin, Malfoy, if it bothers you so much. Don't sit about and feel sorry for yourself."_

_His mouth went crooked when she'd expected it to scowl and that threw her for another loop. She thought maybe he'd thank her, but he was silent. She didn't like this, didn't like this at all, and hurried in her departure. "Um… well, see you." And she dissolved into grateful abyss with a splintering sound, her mind as awhirl as her body._

()()()

My birth on June 5th, 1980 was celebrated only because I was unfortunate enough to be conceived on a Malfoy marriage bed and born the heir to the Malfoy legacy. The fact of our wealth does not need to be enumerated further than to say that I never lacked for anything I desired. My father was at the same time distant and omnipresent, my mother doting and more intelligent than was expected of a woman in her position. Mine was a relatively happy childhood; my father was neither abusive nor excessively cruel, as many have hypothesized. I spent my days wandering the grounds and amusing myself with my many playthings. I had few friends, primarily due to the isolation brought on by our affluence and social position. I was a spoiled child but there are worse fates. I could have been Harry Potter's friend but was too stupid to try.

I had not yet turned fifteen when the first event occurred that truly pertains to my revelatory life. In the days after Harry appeared in the middle of a field at Hogwarts holding the body of a dead boy, I went home to find my father like I'd never seen him before. His eyes were bright and feverish and his voice, normally smoothly modulated and forbidding, shook with energy. He could not stop moving; his form, so much like a dark, dominant sculpture in the permanent places of my mind, seemed unsure and kinetic, as if he were struggling to contain a force like lightning within his skin. He announced suddenly the magnificent news: The Dark Lord had returned and glory would soon be restored to the Malfoy name. I knew not how to react—the childish insults and snobberies that had become so natural to me seemed insufficient, suddenly ridiculous. There was a type of insolence in his joy, a juvenile aspect to his demeanor that frightened me.

My father declared that Voldemort's forces would soon conquer Dumbledore's supporters, invade Hogwarts, and overpower the Ministry, and that any opposition was useless, nothing could prevent our victory. That was when I understood that my father too was terrified.

I have since come to realize that the Dark suffered from unreality. It was uninhabitable; men could only die for it, lie for it, kill and wound for it. No one, in the intimate depths of his being, could wish for it to be triumphant.* My father, I think, knew this but chose to disregard it. Why, I cannot say.

()()()

"_You're having a rough week, Malfoy," she said to the empty space over his head. Harry and Ron hovered in the periphery, obviously wishing they could melt into walls. This was a girly-type thing, they'd told her, and they were rubbish at it. And looking at him—_

(The veins in his hands stood out as if he were preparing for flight. He sat rigid, hands in fists, eyes fixed into the bookshelf across from him like he could bore a hole into it. The muscles in his neck were marble, the corner of his mouth jumped when he first heard her voice. He hadn't spoken.)

_-she could see why. She sat, not adjacent on the couch but far to the left of him in an armchair, so he could see her if he wanted to. _

_Grief was an old friend of hers. She'd made its acquaintance at Hogwarts; the war had cemented their relationship into a lifelong union. She knew how to coax rationality from it, how to surrender to it, how to ignore it, how to hate it. She understood its intricacies, and it seemed to understand hers. Its presence had become comforting, assurance that she yet lived and yet felt. She liked to think they had an understanding. _

_So she knew what to do._

_She flapped The Daily Prophet in his direction, the pages rustling, just so his notice of it was unavoidable. The front page screamed the news; the date read just a few days after the award ceremony, a few days that meant everything. His eyes flicked over to her, and she fought a shiver—they were cold, unrecognizing. "Lucius Malfoy, dead in his cell in Azkaban. The whole world knows, there's no use in hiding. Stop feeling sorry for yourself." And she felt only slightly less dreadful than she would have felt saying such horrible things to a friend. _

_His jaw clenched, hard, and she saw a vein in his temple throb irregularly with his pulse._

"_Just a few days after that awful ceremony you didn't even want, and now this." She tutted, markedly laying on the condescension. "Do you think he felt the urge to repent before his death, like a Catholic? Like a muggle? Do you think as he was lying ill in his cell he had any last wishes?"_

"Fuck you."

_She recollected that if, at this moment, she were the girl of seventeen she once had been the hatred in his voice would have made her weep. She felt hardened, like something baked until burnt, terrible in the easy, necessary power she wielded over him. "They say here that he cried out for someone just before he died, but they don't say who it was. Any ideas?"_

"_Hermione…" whispered Harry, uneasy and reproaching._

"_Now, I don't very well know the relationship between him and your mother, but she'd be my guess." She saw him flinch in the corner of her eyes, but she was talking to the floor, quickly and with forced flippancy. "Pneumonia, that's a horrible way to go. A muggle disease, that, but nasty if not treated. They also say that his death means the entirety of the Malfoy fortune—"_

"_GRANGER. STOP," he said _(screamed)_, the rasp and appeal in his throat enough to crack a hole in her pretense. His face was coming apart, its lines trembling and vibrating into entropy, the stoicism in his eyes dissolving into redness and wet, his breath coming suddenly fast and catching. His fingers gripped the hair at his temples, the joints white, and a curious sound arose from him, like the keening of a dog or a wolf. Harry and Ron slipped finally from the room._

_And she let him suffer. She offered no comfort. Grief had once revealed to her it was best left alone. _

_She sat and watched as that sound deteriorated into sobs and the sobs kept coming until his breath seemed like it was fleeing from him. Then she slipped onto the couch, fighting his hands and elbows and expletives as he tried to push her from him. When she could she held onto him, held his shoulders in her hands to steady him, to keep the pieces of him from coming apart and scattering around the room. It was not an embrace; she was not soft, but rigid like steel in her support, a brace against his pain. She moved with his breath, resting her chin on the back of the hand that gripped his right shoulder, helping him draw in air and exhale so he wouldn't give way, so he could continue. _

_When the terrible sounds that he was making subsided and the heaving beneath her hands calmed, she withdrew. They sat in silence for minutes or hours, his head in his hands and her stare blank ahead. _

"_He was your father and you have a right to grieve. Don't let them tell you otherwise, don't think you shouldn't," she whispered, because the words were difficult with the obstruction in her throat and the heat in her tear-ducts. He turned his face, his face shining with snot and tears and whatever else, and looked at her. _

_She found Harry and Ron in the kitchen, each trying to forget what they'd heard. She kept her voice expressionless. "He'll be better in a few days, I'd imagine."_

"_Hermione… are you…?" Ron placed his hand on her shoulder but she shrugged him away._

"_I'm fine." She smiled a bit in their direction (distractedly, meaninglessly) and disapparated._

_She was still living with her parents, and that night she cast a silencing charm around her room so her cries—lest she woke from a nightmare, lest she made that same sound Malfoy had made, lest Grief once again throbbed into her —wouldn't wake them. _

()()()

* "Nazism suffers from unreality, like Erigena's hells. It is uninhabitable; men can only die for it, lie for it, kill and wound for it. No one, in the intimate depths of his being, can wish for it to be triumphant. I shall venture to conjecture: _Hitler wants to be defeated_. Hitler is collaborating blindly with the inevitable armies that will annihilate him, as the metal vultures and the dragon (which must not have been unaware that that they were monsters) collaborated, mysteriously, with Hercules." – J. L. Borges, "A Comment on August 23, 1944"

**A/N**: That last scene was really difficult to write. I recently experienced a loss and I think I was pouring my heart out a bit. The bit about grief just about killed me.

Obviously I stole the brilliant part from Borges. :)


	3. A simulacrum of life

**A simulacrum of life**

()()()

At the age of fifteen I was taken to Voldemort. His appearance both horrified and fascinated me. They describe him in textbooks and lore well enough, but no one can truly understand what it was to look upon The Dark Lord unless they happen to be one of the few he allowed into his presence. Magic steeped off him in waves; the veins and capillaries showed red and blue beneath the thin layer of his colorless skin. That magic which enveloped him like a chrysalis had corrupted his physical being to such an extent that he was unrecognizable as human. He was the lone member of a different species entirely, both above and below us. He alone inhabited that uninhabitable place, and it took its toll.

I can remember shaking when he looked at me. His instructions were a blur—I could not concentrate enough to understand his words while his eyes bored into me, inflamed slits on a face containing otherwise muted, flat features. It was only after, when my father explained the task that had been asked of me, that I realized the magnitude of this request.

Upon returning to Hogwarts for my sixth year I lost weight and gained a distinctly wiry, furtive expression. The cruel games I had played as a child became cruel endeavors. My friends noticed my new gravity but dared not ask me its cause.

()()()

_Hermione began to see mounting concern in the faces of her unaware but well-meaning parents. They saw the change in her and were allowed as an explanation only suspicion. She never said a word to them about the war, even after its conclusion, when she'd reversed the memory spell she had cast on them. But they knew something was wrong. They kept asking her if she was going back to Hogwarts until she was so sick of them and of _it _that she found herself spending less and less time at home and more time at Harry's, in the little house in which he had been born, in which his parents died, and in which, now, he was beginning to cultivate a new life. She'd been worried when he said he wanted to live there, to rebuild and re-appropriate what had once belonged to his tragic family, but she saw now that it had been a type of therapy that had been invaluable to his recovery, essential in the revolution after the war. _

_It became a type of sanctuary for them, for those members of The Order who had survived, where they didn't have to explain the war to outsiders and where it could simply be an unspoken part of them. They were able to generate a simulacrum of life _before _because life _during _had become such an integral part of them. With others, those who had read about the war in the paper and had never seen the mask of a Death Eater, that distinction was always stark between them and made meaningful conversation a chore. It was exhausting and they became exhausted of it._

_Hermione recognized the fundamental injury done by this situation but was surprised to find she didn't particularly care. She wept a bit when she realized what she had to do, but the understanding that her life could not possibly resume the path on which it had been traversing before the war was not so traumatic as it should have been. So one day she showed up at Harry's with a few suitcases and more books and he let her in without a word. She slept in the room that had once held his crib and now contained only the faintest twinge of that terrible magic that had almost succeeded in ending his life. She got used to it. _

_Soon Ron arrived and, several months after, Malfoy. Godric's Hollow and the understanding it enclosed pulled them in like gravity. _

_Hermione, irate, almost left upon seeing her erstwhile tormentor at the door, expensive luggage in hand. She almost packed her belongings in that instant and disappeared to some place both less and more consoling. She _did _leave, in fact, for several hours, and spent the time wandering the second-growth woods nearby. While their relationship had improved in cordiality and lessened in outright hostility since that day neither of them ever mentioned, she honestly considered refusing him sanctuary. She even rehearsed her reasoning for nearly an hour, going over the permutations in her head, the questions she was sure the three of them would ask her, until abruptly she imagined the vastness of an empty house and the memories of two dead parents and the resentment of strangers. _

_There wasn't a room for each of them until she relented and she and Malfoy (he'd informed her bluntly that he had been second only to her in charms at Hogwarts, and he didn't want her mucking up the job with girly embellishments) charmed an extra wing onto the house. It was a bit drafty—she'd made sure of it, in fact—but contained two more bedrooms and a much-needed bathroom and the others didn't complain. They hosted frequent guests: Ginny, often (she slept in Harry's room and no one said anything); Neville, still mourning Luna; George, when he could no longer take Mrs. Weasley's prodding and bustling (her nerves had only deteriorated with the losses she'd suffered). The cottage in Godric's Hollow, fittingly, became a sort of safe house for the children of the Horcrux War._

_None of them could really sleep through the night so someone was always up and about; she could usually count on finding Ron in the kitchen at some point in the early hours of the morning, and Harry found solace in zoning out in front of the telly, the watercolor lights of its screen kaleidoscoping over his young face in the otherwise darkened room. Hermione tried to use those insomnious hours in a productive way—writing, researching, tidying the house—but usually ended up, weather permitting, sitting on the stoop and listening to the heartening sounds of the night. Malfoy tended to prowl unnervingly about the house; often he would melt from the shadows when she least expected and give her a minor conniption. _

_They no longer argued, they no longer engaged in the sarcastic banter that had become their mainstay in the months after the war when he'd always been _around_. Occasionally she sensed a quantity of resentment that she thought probably stemmed from her actions the day his father died, for which she didn't necessarily blame him. Mostly there lay between them a moderately uncomfortable silence, a mutual understanding that conversation was neither necessary nor desirable. The few words they exchanged were short and direct; occasionally she would ask him if he'd seen something she was searching for, or he would request that she pass the salt or the wine at dinner. Dialogue was simply superfluous—they were not friends and neither of them wanted to be. _

_(She sometimes sensed his eyes on her, felt that unnamable, instinctual pressure at her back. She would turn to look at him, find him absorbed in whatever he'd been doing, and reason that she must have invented it.)_

_But she deduced that he must have been either extremely bored or a little drunk on the night (early morning, really) when he swung open the front door to join her on the stoop. She'd been watching the stars as they winked at her from above and her posture gave a jolt when she heard the creak of the hinges. He sat on a step several places above hers; she was so astonished that she actually swiveled to look at him. He held a glass half-full of amber whiskey with the tips of the fingers of his right hand; the angle his wrist made was relaxed and innately masculine and she stared at it for a moment._

Drunk, then, _she thought. Without thinking she held out her hand in a silent request. He let loose an amused sound and passed her the tumbler. The swallow she took was hearty and it scorched her throat on its way down before settling pleasantly below her ribs. Cautioning a glance in his direction, she finished off what remained in the glass and set it on the stair next to her._

"_I thought it would help me sleep but I haven't been pissed in so long that I forgot I get talkative. Irritating, that," he said wryly. "And as you're the only fortunate soul awake at the moment, here we are." His voice was not so sharp as it normally was, the enunciation of his syllables relaxed with drink. It reminded her unavoidably of his schoolboy drawl, and the thought made her want to giggle. _

"_Mmm," she hummed. "And I was having a perfectly wonderful time, too."_

"_Apologies."_

"_I'll get over it." She turned her head, resting her cheek on her folded hands to look at him. It had been quite some time since she'd had even a swallow of hard liquor and she could feel it bubbling straight to her head, felt the heat rising in her cheeks. "Today Harry told me he thinks we should get jobs. Says we spend too much time cooped up in the house."_

"_He sounds like you."_

_She pulled a face. "I am very content wallowing in my depression, thank-you-very-much. But I'll admit he has a point," she confessed. Then, carefully, she added (because they had never really acknowledged what it really was they were all doing there, because she knew in her gut that it was true): "We can't hide out here forever."_

"_Says who?" It was vaguely insolent, and he was smirking at her a little in an uncomfortably friendly way. "I've no interest in returning to society just to give them something to point and whisper at."_

"_What did you want to be before?"_

_His eyes turned shifty; she perceived his discomfort immediately and pounced. "O-ho! What's this? Something embarrassing? Quidditch player—no, Muggle Studies professor!"_

_He was laughing at her enthusiasm (she'd turned around fully to face him—the prospect of humiliation was too juicy a treat to let pass by). When he spoke amusement made his voice enjoyable. "What? No, nothing like that. I always thought… you know, before everything happened, that I'd quite like to be an Auror."_

_This _did _shock her. "An Auror, really?" She paused, considering. "Well, you don't lack for experience." As the words leapt from her mouth she knew it had been the _wrong _thing to say._

_His face darkened and a storm transformed his expression. He sat up like a ramrod had been shoved down his spinal cord. He looked at her steadily, coldly, as if he were trying to determine her intent, whether she'd meant to dig into him. She kept her face neutral, expectant. Finally, after a few edgy moments, he relaxed and the curve returned to his posture, the latent hurricane quieted in his irises. "I don't think that's quite what they're looking for," he ground out._

"_Of course that's not what I meant, Malfoy," she said softly, staring at the empty tumbler next to her and the dewy condensation forming around its base._

_They were silent for some time after that; the carefully cultivated ease had fled from them. Hermione listened to the sounds of the insects, imagined she could hear the noise of distant radio waves from planets and stars, like a moist fingertip on hundreds of simultaneous glass rims. She felt the weight of their shared, embarrassing history between them: the night in Hogsmeade, their words after the award ceremony, her appalling and essential actions the day of his father's death. She wondered over the _why _and _how _of these moments, but her energy wore out before any meaningful conclusions could be reached. Their antipathy and aversion to one another seemed to conversely breed situations that called for a backward sort of intimacy. Perhaps it was because she didn't hesitate to tell him the truth, even when it was hurtful or spiteful or necessary or far too piercing. _

_And she really did despise their strange paradox._

_Finally, nerves inexplicably compressing her chest, she spoke, generously and truthfully, against her better judgment. "I actually think you'd be a decent Auror, Malfoy." _

_She could see him studying her in the corner of her vision as she rose. "Might try and sleep, now," she said lightly, stepping past him with tense footfalls. "Goodnight." She supposed the alcohol was causing this unexpected buoyancy in her head._

"'_Night, Granger," he replied, and there was something new in his voice. _

()()()

Magical objects can be tricky. Repairing or modifying them may be perilous. Often they are steeped in old enchantments; so old, in fact, that modern spells often have weakened or undesired effects on their magical signature. In a school like Hogwarts, in a building more than a millennium old once inhabited by four of the greatest minds known to wizarding history, it was rather inevitable that the particular object with which I chose to begin a rapport was near bloody impossible.

When killing Albus Dumbledore became harder than it seemed like it should have been—my inherent reluctance and the increasing belief that he knew what I was up to the entire time worked in tandem to amplify my skepticism—I decided that it might just be easier to let someone else do the dirty work. But repairing the vanishing cabinet was nearly just as difficult, and I began to develop a near-constant headache that rested perilously behind my eyeballs.

I didn't know why Severus Snape was so adamant on his assistance (I do now, and the thought is a steady, unvarying stone in my chest). It's common knowledge sixty years after the fact, and repeating the narrative of his life does him no further justice. I will simply add that I am known for expounding the reality of his heroism.

()()()

_The strange limbo in which they lived—a quiet, not-exactly-tense-but-not-comfortable-either relationship—finally _tipped _on Christmas Eve. They were alone in the house; Harry and Ron had gone to the Burrow, and Hermione (wanting a _normal _Christmas, wanting the first holiday season after the war to be one full of memories of _before _and not _during_) elected to stay behind to prepare for the following day. _

_She was in the midst of discovering that praline topping was more complicated to make than she'd previously thought when he came into the kitchen, screwed the top off a bottle of orange juice and took a long swig. She made an annoyed huff at his lack of a glass but said nothing. _

_The consistency wasn't right. She knew it was supposed to be a pleasant caramel color and bubbling energetically, but the candy had turned an ominous muddy hue and steaming glops of the stuff gurgled up from the bottom of the pan, spitting flecks of sugary lava on her hands. She was stirring it rather frantically, her hair frizzled from the heat, cheeks red, and he was grinning at her like he really enjoyed the sight of her frustration. "Stop that and hand me the pecans, will you, Malfoy?" She asked, attempting a civil tone. The bag of pre-chopped nuts appeared directly in front of her vision and she shot his amused face a glare. "Would you mind emptying them in the pot? I don't want to stop stirring it."_

"_Looks a hopeless case, I'm afraid." He peered into the saucepan with trepidation. "Like volcanic mud."_

"_Shut up," she snapped, a little high strung with the anxiety of the coming day. _

"_Easy, Granger," he replied, his eyes narrowed now, but he complied._

_She should have known it was coming. She observed as if in slowed time the rise of his hand, the way his sweater slipped down his forearm with the movement, the exposure of his left wrist and then the fine light hairs on his arm. She should have shut her eyes against the sight of it. But she saw that black tissue, that brand on his flour-white skin that had grayed only slightly since the war, and she _flinched_. She _cringed.

_She saw the pecans spill out of the bag, held immobile in his frozen hand, and hit the bubbling concoction with a sound like heavy raindrops. Then she watched his face watching hers, and the rising anger in his eyes. They stared at one another for several seconds, tension like heat waves between them._

"_You're never going to get past that, are you?" He asked her this lowly, with a latent, controlled rage that shook up her spine. But she was angry too, angry at his accusatory stare when she had so much with which to accuse _him_._

"_Get _past _it? Past _that_? How could I _possibly _ever be expected to get past that?" _

_He threw the bag on the counter. She expected him to back away from her but he only stepped closer, in her _face_. "Fuck, Granger! It's been six months! I wasn't even really on their side! _What _is your _fucking _problem? Potter and Weasley—"_

"_It's not the same! They're not muggleborn!"_

"What? _Are you off your head? That has nothing to do with it!"_

"_That has _everything _to do with it, Malfoy!" They were screaming at each other now, the quiet calm that had so pervaded their lives gone in a moment. They'd never really discussed it, never discussed the implications of his position during the war, but it tumbled out of her now. "Even being _associated _with them is such a vile, disgusting—"_

"_Associated? If you're _alive _in Britain today you're fucking associated—"_

"_You know what I mean!" Her voice had taken on a high, hysterical note and he took a step back._

"_You're mad! I _knew _you were off your bloody rocker—everyone else just ignores it! I see the way you fucking look at me, Granger! We were on the same fucking side!"_

"_You saw them _every day! _How could you not be influenced—"_

"_So because I _saw _them I have to be just as—"_

"_Association breeds affection, Malfoy!"_

"Affection? _Are you fucking serious!"_

"_Yes! I know you still hate me! I know you still hate what I am! I can see it in your face! You _despise_ my very _blood!_" She punctuated the last word with a push, with the placement her palms on his chest and most of her weight behind them. He stumbled a bit and stared at her, incredulous and near spitting with anger. This she shouted at him, almost incoherent: "Anyone who does what you did sixth year doesn't deserve_ _me _getting fucking past it!"

_And she knew it crossed some kind of line but she didn't care._

_He put his hands on her shoulders and _shoved _her. There was such force behind it that she slammed sideways into the table behind her with a stifled cry. She heard his heavy breathing, the ragged gasping of his exhalations, and turned slowly to gape at him, mouth open, ignoring the ache shooting up from her hipbone. The anger in him was stark and his voice shook with it. "You fucking cu—" _

_She drew back her hand to slap him but he was too quick and caught her wrist, twisting her arm at such an angle that she had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying out. They stayed like that, and she could feel the heat of his resentment and wrath against her skin. Finally he wrenched her towards him and she _did_ let loose a little whimper of pain, hating herself._

"_You know _nothing _about who I am and what I did. What I _had _to do."_

_He pushed her away from him with a look of supreme disgust and stalked from the room. _

()()()

**A/N**: Chapters might be coming more slowly in the next few weeks. Finals approaching :(.


	4. A growing, dizzying web

**A growing, dizzying web**

()()()

I was such an idiot about the whole business that I am genuinely surprised not a soul caught on (save for Potter, maybe, but on the whole my youth was an effective mask behind which I could feign innocence). But the months of work were not in vain. A singing canary, fluttering ephemerally, _alive_, was the emblem of my success.

In their homes, in their hideaways, in their dens, the Death Eaters began to prepare.

()()()

"_What's wrong with you two?"_

_Hermione leveled a glare in Harry's direction that told him with its simmering ferocity to shut it. Malfoy was expressionless as he read the Prophet. Harry lifted his eyebrows at her and gave a little shrug, obviously resigning himself to silence. She continued upstairs to her room, her legs heavy as they fought the steps and her footfalls seemingly thunderous. _

_They hadn't spoken a word since their confrontation, and while silence was not excessively unusual between them this was different. Rigidity radiated between them and dissociated them, tangible like the surface tension of water. She'd caught him staring (glowering) at her more than once, and he had held her gaze for no insignificant amount of time on each occasion. She felt trapped, caged by the gray condescension and antipathy she saw in his eyes, rendered immobile by his despised attention until he broke the contact (it felt physical, she was so affected by it) with a sneer. _

_Her guilt didn't help the situation. She secretly, in that hidden place she didn't like to acknowledge but was becoming more and more familiar to her, felt that perhaps that last cut about sixth year had been just a bit cruel. _

_His non-presence became such a bane to her that she often found herself spending those ubiquitous hours of insomnia studying just to keep her mind off the whole business. It felt good to open up an old book and smell the pages, that lovely scent of paper and ink that was so intrinsic to her. _

_But focus eluded her. She found herself staring at the candescent wick of a lit candle one night as she sat at the kitchen table some time between the hours of four and five in the morning. An open book lay before her, the shadows across the yellowing pages flickering in rhythm with the flame. Transfixed, she ran her fingertip up the candle's length, up until the wax turned soft and down to the candleholder. She drew her hand back sharply upon touching, accidentally, the molten wax quite close to the flame, smiling slightly once the mild pain subsided to see her fingerprint copied exactly in the little wax cap she flicked from her fingertip. She released the iron constraints she held on her thoughts, slowly like the painful relaxation of a sore muscle, and allowed her mind to wander. To wander over the past six months, over the holidays that hadn't truly been holidays at all, over the friends she could never see, over the lonely human density of the house, over her parents, over her faults and lacks and failures. She imagined herself just two short years ago, hopeful and brimming with ideals and faith. Distractedly she held her index finger to the hot wax again, nearly touching the wick, and it wasn't until she felt the fine hair on her knuckles singe and the skin around her nail and beyond blister that she pulled her hand away, gasping. Her heart pounding in her chest, she waited the excruciating seconds for the wax to congeal before running to the sink and attempting to remove it from her finger. The blisters tore just as a whimper tore from her lips, and clear lymph, not quite blood but close enough that her stomach churned, dripped from her fingernail before she stuck her hand under the running water._

_Her breath came in rasps and hisses, fast through her teeth. Her vision shook and she felt a sudden, strange headache at the back of her neck. She'd never done anything like that before and the ease with which she hurt herself terrified her._

_She didn't notice his presence until he moved behind her. The rustle of his clothes made her start and she let out an instinctive sound as she jerked her head towards him. She saw him staring at her through the riot of her hair._

_They watched one another, her eyes inexplicably locked into his, which she saw as only hollow, glinting shadows against the pallor of his face. His expression was completely neutral (the mouth straight and tight, the skin of his forehead and cheeks marble) and she felt like dying from the shame of it. Finally he turned like nothing had happened (like he'd _seen _nothing) and walked out. _

_Hermione sat there for an unknowable time, staring blankly ahead, before she carefully picked up the candleholder and threw it hard across the room. It disintegrated into ceramic shards upon colliding with the opposite wall, and, enjoying the satisfaction of this, she did the same with the plate and empty glass that sat next to her. The crash these collisions made sent a different kind of satisfaction through her, less potent but nonetheless effective. She left the mess there and no one mentioned it in the morning._

_Some time later (Weeks? Days? Months? Time was becoming something transient that she paid little mind.) a loud crash wrenched Hermione unpleasantly from her dream, and she jerked under the bedclothes as the disagreeable sensation of resurfacing hit her like a freight train. She forgot the dream in an instant, in the half second between lucid slumber and full wakefulness, but she knew it had been lovely and likely sexual given the feel of her body, both loose and taut all at once. She gave herself a resolute shake and groaned as the sound of drunken laughter filtered in from under the door of her room. She burrowed under covers and pillows but could not seem to stop concentrating on the noises from downstairs. Her mind wouldn't stop whirling about and she knew sleep would be impossible._

_She didn't particularly care that all she wore besides underwear was a not-very-long t-shirt and threw open her door without further thought. The noises came louder once she left the asylum of her bedroom, and she descended the stairs towards their source. _

"'_Mione, come join us!" Ron cheered jovially upon seeing her, holding a bottle of firewhiskey aloft. The men of the house were dispersed about the living room, obviously enjoying themselves immensely if she was to judge by the smell of alcohol and the sight of smiles. Neville and Seamus were there as well, and she frowned a bit to see the latter swaying, bleary-eyed, in his seat._

"_Do you lot know what time it is?"_

"_You're not wearing pants, Hermione."_

"_That's because I was _sleeping_."_

"_Best not provoke her, boys." This came from Malfoy, whose eyes flamed across her like always, and she stiffened. "You never know _what _she'll do."_

_No one else seemed to notice the strangeness of this, but she felt a paralysis in her spine and looked at him sharply. His intoxication was not so pronounced as in the others, but that drawl was back and it contrasted incessantly with the frozen look in his eyes. She let out a harsh breath through her teeth; they were clenched so hard she felt the ache in her jaw. The boys watched them for a moment, drunkenly perplexed, before returning to their previous conversation. _

_She and Malfoy continued to stare at one another. She felt something in her crack._

"_Can I speak with you for a moment, Malfoy?" It came out like grit, squeezed between the wall of her cheeks and teeth. _

_He gave a short nod and rose, steady on his feet, to follow her into the hall. Once they were in the dark she whirled on him. "Can we set something straight about the other night? That was an accident. I don't know what you assumed, but it was an _accident."

"_I don't believe you."_

"What?" _Hermione gaped at him; he returned her gaze coolly. His serenity was infuriating. She watched his pale face in the dark as he took a breath and opened his mouth, tongue pressed against his teeth as if he were going to speak, before closing it again. "What, Malfoy?"_

"_You _cooked _your finger, Granger. Now, I don't know about you, but where I'm from that's generally not a sign of terrific mental fitness."_

"_I did not _cook _myself, you git. I just wasn't paying attention." Her vision was beginning to waver at the edges, to twist and contort she was so upset. _

_He seemed to bristle, obviously frustrated with her behind the veneer of the cool, expressionless set of his face. "How can you—" He took a breath and stopped himself, eyes going northward in what appeared to be an unconscious plea for her sanity. Hermione crossed her arms in a huff._

"_Don't _pity _me, Malfoy. That's the _last _thing I want." It came out slightly more shrill than she had intended._

"_Well someone's got to, don't they? Apparently you've lost the better half of your mind."_

"_I most certainly have not, you—"_

"_Merlin, Granger, just because you pick a fight does _not _mean I'm going to let this slide. I know we don't like each other, but we do live together and that means a certain amount of cordiality is necessitated. Thus if I see you intentionally injure yourself it becomes my responsibility to make sure you're not absolutely raving and likely to smother us in our sleep. So _shut up_ and tell me what's wrong or I'll tell the wonder twins over there what I saw."_

"_I don't understand what you think you know, Malfoy. No one else thinks anything is wrong, and they live in this house too." She said this accusingly, staring at him hard._

_He hesitated—this obviously bothered him, but he appeared to settle on a familiar superiority to protect himself (from what, she wondered?). "I think I'm just a _mite_ more observant than the two wunderkinds in the next room."_

"_You are _not _more observant than Harry, you ass, and stop avoiding the question—"_

"_Potter? That's rich—"_

"_Will you just ANSWER, PLEASE?" Her voice, initially a stark shriek in the dark, dropped off severely as she screeched last word, her temper and mindfulness of those in the next room battling against one another. _

_She hated that she could just barely see the glint of his eyes in the darkness as he looked at her. "It's _that_, Granger. I know you've always had a bit of a temper, but this is just ridiculous." He paused, taking a deep breath and shaking his head. He raised a hand, rubbing his fingers over his mouth as he watched her. She watched the arc of white his movement made through the gloom, her breath coming fast. "You're so fucking _angry_." He took a step closer, as if involuntarily. "It's like I can sense the heat of it from here."_

"_I'm _not—_" _

_She stopped suddenly, shutting her mouth with an audible click of her teeth. Because she could _feel _it. _

_She felt the dampened, latent, ubiquitous rage seething through the cords and surfaces of her body, curling like a writhing serpent through her intestines and under her skin. It had once been an entirely foreign sensation but now seemed such a part of her that would not have noticed it had she not heard the words from his mouth. Anger resided like a staggering tenant in her limbs, in her aortas and veins, and it made her different and disarming. Her lips opened and shut as she stared helplessly at his face, expressionless as it was and void of pity. The scorch of her fury rose up from somewhere in her gut, past her lungs, constricting them as it went, coming to rest behind her retinas._

"_Granger…" _

_She felt her tears in a visceral kind of way, not really registering them until she sensed the tickle of them down her cheeks. She turned away from him with the sound of an animal and pressed her hands over her mouth and forehead against the wall. She shut her eyes tight, trying to suppress her embarrassment. But it wouldn't stop._

_She sensed him immobile at her right. She couldn't see him watching her but she could feel it burning a crack in the side of her face. The tears stung the dark smudges under her eyes. A horrifying sound, very soft but high like a child, emerged, muffled, from her lips. He took another seemingly involuntary step towards her._

"_D-Don't touch me." Her voice cracked and she made to shrink from him without actually moving._

"_I wasn't going to." _

"_Go away, please."_

"_No."_

"_WHY NOT?"_

_He didn't answer but stood watch, a twisted sentinel, as she slid down the wall into a huddle on the ground. The strange sound stopped and she heard, somehow, incongruous laughter from the other end of the house. He sat down next to her and she sent him a vile glare through the glaze of wet, but he wasn't looking at her and stared straight ahead at the opposite wall._

_After a time she calmed, her cheeks became sticky with salt and the taste of crying dissipated from her mouth. She felt suddenly an extraordinary fatigue and, almost without realizing it, lowered herself to the ground so that she lay on her side, the top of her head only barely touching the side of his hip. She felt the warmth of that scant contact through her hair and down into her body below. Her spine relaxed from the heat of it and her lungs loosened so that breathing became something on which she didn't have to concentrate to get right. _

_She thought that maybe their breath synchronized as they sat there, but she was probably imagining it. She drew her knees up to her chest and her hands up to her chin, a protective ball with the stabilizing energies of the wall at her back and him above. _

"_I guess we've each had our own little special breakdown now, right?" It came out with a bubbly, snot-soaked giggle and her body convulsed with it. He remained silent and she had nearly resolved to drag herself to her feet when she felt him rest his hand on the back of her head. It was not a caress, it resisted tenderness, but it was like a steadying, warming force against her and she took a deep, shuddering breath upon sensing it. She couldn't look up at him, afraid of testing, of breaking the instant, but stared instead straight ahead as he had. The pressure of his fingertips teetered on the edge of comforting and unnerving and something else, and she felt it increase until suddenly it was gone and so was he. She watched and heard his footsteps down the hall and exhaled sharply as he disappeared around the corner. The ground felt hard against her temple and she stayed there for a while, exhaustion and confusion preventing movement. _

()()()

In the instant my life began just we two existed. I remember that I stared at the headmaster, I watched his eyes and heard his voice—so calm, despite the obvious pain the Dark Lord's potion had caused him.

_Draco… you are not a killer._

It was a second, maybe two, between the moment my mind seemed to open like the petals of a flower and when I lowered my wand. I think the span of a year, of a lifetime, could fit in that second; my destiny was presented to me and I determined, unknowingly, my future and myself.

I saw the bifurcations my life would take and had taken, the paths my choices would forge like they existed in temporal and corporeal space, unfurling like a sapling before my vision. I saw the alternate realities, the alternate _times_, my decisions made; had I chosen to befriend Harry Potter, had I ever really _talked _to my father, had I refused Voldemort's request, I would be one of the different people I now saw, the separate and distinct boys that seemed to blink back at me with _my _eyes at the end of the wraithlike forks of the sapling. I created (or was shown) alternate worlds in which I existed, both the same and opposite. I understood that there was no uniform and absolute time, but an infinite series of _times_, a growing, dizzying web of divergent, convergent and parallel times that approach one another, fork, are snipped off, and contain _all _possibilities. In most of those times I do not exist; in some, you exist but I do not; in the one in which I now stared at the man I was meant to kill, the disfavoring hand of chance had led me to the astronomy tower on the night the Dark Mark floated like a specter over its heights. In some times I am an error, a ghost.*

The juncture of _this _choice, of _this _instant lay before me, spread out between Albus Dumbledore and my own indecision.

()()()

*Fragments taken from "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Borges

**A/N: **Early Xmas present, I guess. I'm on winter break, so maybe lots more!


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